Oregon Vaughns

So, as we got home tonight, the neighbor kid (maybe 11 years old) was getting home.  We don’t know our neighbors – we don’t get out much!  It took us 15 minutes to get ready and we had to take off for chess club… As we were pulling out of the driveway, I noticed that the neighbor boy was still outside.  It is below freezing and he was standing at a darkened doorway.  I told Andy to stop to see if he is OK.  So, Andy rolls down the window and says “Hey, are you okay?  Do you need help?”  Of course the kid doesn’t answer!  Some strange man in a dark SUV in the middle of the night pulls over to ask you if you need help?  STRANGER!

However, I see he looks a little scared, so I get out of the car to go help him (it is pretty much pitch black).  I try not to startle him, me being a stranger and all.. I talk to him as I approach him.  “Hey, do you need help?  Do you need to call your parents?”  He won’t talk to me at all!  I don’t blame him.  STRANGER!  I keep talking to him because it is freezing outside and he has been outside almost 20 minutes.  All of the sudden, I remember his mom’s name.  So I ask him “Your mom is Shyla, right?  I am your neighbor Stacey.”  Finally, since I know his mom, he becomes a little less scared of me.  He turns and looks at me, shivering to death with small tears in his eyes, but he is still skeptical…. I am a STRANGER approaching him in the middle of the night.

So, I can see that he is fiddling with his keys in the door knob and they are totally stuck and won’t turn.  His hands are shaking he is so cold (and probably scared of me) and he cannot get the door open.  So I told him:  “Let me help you turn those keys so you can get inside and get warm and then I have to go.”  He finally just nodded.

I turned the keys, opened the door, and he ran inside.

I think I will go introduce myself tomorrow to the family so the kid knows he can always get help from the not-so-strange neighbor.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 10:15 pm and is filed under Stacey's Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.